IGCSE Classes in Dubai

The useful comparison is not between brands but between business models, because the model explains the price. A marketplace that matches you to a university student has a different cost base from an agency that recruits qualified subject teachers, and both differ from a tuition centre carrying premises, a licence and staff in Dubai. A freelance tutor driving to your community is pricing their car and their evening as well as their teaching.

The table sets these out with the AED bands each model advertises and the source of the figure. Everything in it is another organisation's published rate, named and dated to October 2026. None of it is IB Gram's price list, and a provider that quotes you a number should be able to tell you what it includes, how long the session is, and whether the figure is per hour or per lesson - those are three different questions and they are frequently conflated.

Two patterns are worth noticing. The first is that the in-home band carries a visible travel premium: Bestimate puts in-home visits at AED 180-350 and independent home tutors advertise AED 200-500, against AED 150-300 for a qualified tutor working online. The second is that the top of the market is defined by scarcity rather than by format - a specialist in a thinly taught specification commands AED 200-450 or more whether they are on a screen or in a room.

What this means practically is that comparing two quotes requires normalising them first. Per hour or per lesson. Sixty minutes or fifty. Travel included or added. Materials included or billed. One subject or two. Cancellation terms. A quote of AED 200 that is a fifty-minute lesson with a two-session cancellation notice is not cheaper than AED 220 for a full hour with twenty-four hours' notice, and most families never get far enough into the detail to see that.

Group classes look like obvious value and sometimes are. The honest way to compare them is per student per hour of direct attention, not per student per hour of elapsed time, because those two numbers diverge sharply as the group grows. In a class of six, a student receives on average ten minutes of individual attention in an hour. At AED 80 a head that is good value if the content is genuinely new to all six, and poor value if five of them are there for a different reason than your child.

The deciding question is whether the students share the problem. A group works when everyone is meeting a topic for the first time: a new unit, a shared syllabus gap, a timed-paper practice session where the clock does the teaching. A group fails when the members have different error patterns, because the tutor has to choose whose problem to address, and your child's problem may not be chosen.

This is also where diagnosis pays for itself. A parent who knows their child is losing marks to unwritten method and timing does not need a group class on electrolysis, however cheap it is. A parent with no diagnosis buys whatever is on offer and hopes some of it lands. The hour spent getting a marked script read properly changes which product you should buy, and often saves more than it costs.

The table below sets the formats side by side. IB Gram's own arrangement is one-to-one or paired over live video - we do not run group classes at a Dubai venue - so the group rows are included as market context rather than as something we sell. They are genuinely the right answer for some families, and saying so is more useful than pretending otherwise.

Two tutors can quote AED 150 and AED 400 for the same subject and level and both be pricing rationally. The variables are visible once named, and knowing them turns a quote from a mystery into a negotiation you can hold up your end of.

Scarcity dominates. A tutor who has actually taught Cambridge Additional Mathematics or Edexcel Further Pure Maths is rare in any one part of Dubai, and rarity sets the price regardless of format. Tier matters next: Extended and Higher work commands more than Core and Foundation because fewer tutors are secure in the extension content. Timing matters third, and it is the one families control least well - a February slot in a Year 11 exam run costs more than the same slot booked in September, because by February the diaries are full.

Then there are the structural variables. Session length, since a fifty-minute 'hour' is common and should be asked about. Commitment length, since a term booked up front usually prices below a rolling week. Travel, which is the whole difference between the AED 150-300 online band and the AED 180-500 in-home band. Whether materials are included. Whether a second subject with the same tutor attracts a different rate. And urgency, which is a real factor and an uncomfortable one.

The table below sets out the direction each factor pushes and roughly how far. Treat the magnitudes as a guide to the shape of a quote rather than as measured figures, because they are drawn from the published bands rather than from a survey with a sample size behind it.

The headline rate is rarely the whole invoice, and the gap between them is where most of the dissatisfaction in this market lives. None of the following is dishonest in itself; the problem is that they are usually disclosed at the point of billing rather than the point of decision.

Registration or matching fees, charged once at the start by some agencies. Materials and printing, where a provider supplies workbooks. Assessment or diagnostic fees charged separately from the first lesson. Late-cancellation charges, which vary from twenty-four hours' notice to a full session forfeited, and which matter enormously in a city where a school fixture can move with a day's notice. Rescheduling limits per month. Minimum commitment terms, which can mean a term's notice to stop. Peak-season surcharges in the exam run. Travel surcharges on in-home arrangements for outlying communities. And payment-method differences, where a card payment carries a fee that a bank transfer does not.

The right move is to ask for all of it in writing before the first paid session, in one message with numbered questions. A provider who answers crisply has thought about it. A provider who answers in generalities will be answering in generalities when there is a dispute. This is not a sign of bad faith on their part so much as a sign that the terms do not exist in a form anyone can read, which amounts to the same thing in practice.

On VAT specifically, the only safe position is to ask whether a quoted figure includes it and to get the answer in writing. The tax treatment of education and tuition services in the UAE is a matter for the Federal Tax Authority's own guidance rather than for a tutoring provider's summary, and this page does not state it. What a provider can and should tell you is whether the number they just quoted is the number you will pay.

Tutoring is a small line next to a Dubai school fee, and placing it next to the other education costs a family carries makes it easier to judge. The emirate's private sector held 387,441 students across 227 private schools offering 17 different curricula in 2024-25, and KHDA confirmed on 22 May 2026 that there will be no increase in private school fees for the 2026-27 academic year, under Dubai's second economic incentives package valued at AED 1.5 billion within a AED 2.5 billion total.

That freeze is the right anchor for a tuition budget conversation this year, because it means the rest of the education bill is flat while tutoring is not. Dubai's 2026-27 intake also adds seven new private schools - four UK curriculum and three International Baccalaureate - creating 16,846 new places, after six opened during 2025-26 and enrolment rose 6 per cent. More capacity changes where families can study; it does not change what an hour of specialist teaching costs.

The other cost families forget is exam entry, which is paid through the school in the normal case and directly to a centre for a private candidate. Entry fees are set by the centre rather than the board and vary, so the number has to come from your school's exams officer or from the centre you approach. A retake plan with no entry-fee line in it is an incomplete plan, and the fee is usually payable well before the papers - both Cambridge series close entries months ahead of them, and Pearson's November 2026 window ran from late October to 19 November 2026 with its deadline long past by the time it opened.

The table puts the pieces together. Figures attributed to published sources are marked as such; where a number depends on your own school or centre, the table says so rather than inventing a figure. We publish no fee list for IB Gram here because the right number depends on subject, tier, frequency and availability, and the consultation after the free trial lesson is where it belongs.

The hourly rate is only half the cost. The other half is the number of hours, and that is where families both over-buy and under-buy badly. Over-buying looks like three sessions a week in an attempt to feel safe. Under-buying looks like six sessions booked eight weeks before a June series for a syllabus that was never learned.

The honest ranges are narrower than the market implies. A single diagnosed content gap in one topic is commonly three to five sessions with practice between them. A technique habit - method lines, command terms, units - takes two or three weeks of short frequent drilling rather than a term. A full year of maintenance support in one subject through Year 10 is typically thirty to thirty-five hours spread across the year. An exam-term intensive in one subject is typically ten to sixteen hours concentrated into eight to twelve weeks.

What drives the total up is not difficulty but diffusion. A student with no diagnosis consumes hours on whatever they mention each week, and the same topics recur because nothing was fixed. A student with a ranked error log consumes fewer hours to better effect, which is the practical argument for spending one of the first hours on measurement rather than teaching.

There is one case where more hours genuinely is the answer, and it should be named: a student arriving mid-course in the second term of Year 11 from a different system, with real content gaps across a syllabus and no time. That is a triage situation, and the right conversation includes narrowing the subject set with the school or planning for a later series rather than buying into a window that cannot hold the work.

A low rate is not a red flag by itself. A capable university student teaching Year 9 algebra at the bottom of the published band is good value and the right purchase for that job. The problem arises when a low rate is bought for a job it cannot do: Extended-tier Chemistry eight weeks from a series, or a specification the tutor has never seen a paper from. That hour is not cheap; it is a term spent and a term lost.

There is also a compliance dimension that Dubai families should understand, because it is almost entirely absent from competitor pages. Private tutoring in the UAE is regulated by permit. The private tuition work permit was introduced by Ministerial Resolution No. 710 of 2023 and is granted free of charge for two years. Eligible applicants include teachers registered in government or private schools, employees in the government and private sectors, unemployed individuals, school students aged 15 to 18, and university students. Applications go through MoHRE's smart app, website and e-services system, under the service named 'Issuance of a New Work Permit - Private Tutor Licensing', which lists a two-working-day completion time and no fees.

Individuals offering private tutoring without a permit are subject to fines and penalties under the applicable laws. No fine schedule has been published - press reporting notes that the ministry did not specify amounts or detail the penalties - so any specific figure circulating online is unverified and we will not repeat one. The permit itself being free of charge is the point worth knowing: a tutor cannot cite permit cost as a reason for a rate.

Separately, a tutoring operation with premises and staff in Dubai needs a KHDA Educational Services Permit for a training institute, with initial approval first and annual renewal requested at least thirty days before expiry. That is a different thing from an individual's work permit, and it is why 'KHDA approval' is a phrase to treat carefully: it applies to institutes with premises. IB Gram holds no such permit, operates no UAE premises, and makes no claim of approval or endorsement by KHDA, ADEK, SPEA, the Ministry of Education, Cambridge or Pearson.

At renewal, the question is not whether the sessions happened or whether your child liked them. It is whether the losses that were costing marks in week one are still costing marks in week twelve. That is answerable if the work was documented and unanswerable if it was not, which is the practical reason to insist on written session notes and marked papers from the start rather than at the end.

Three things are worth looking at. The error log, compared with its first version: have the labels changed? Two marked papers from the same specification, placed side by side: has the loss moved from method to something else, which is progress even if the score is similar? And the student's own account of what they do differently in the exam hall, which is often the clearest signal of all.

A flat score with a changed error profile is a term that worked. A flat score with an identical error profile is a term that did not, and the correct response is to change the approach rather than to add hours - adding hours to an activity that is not working simply buys more of the thing that is not working. That sounds obvious written down and it is the most common error in this market.

It is also worth asking what the alternative use of the money was. For some families, one diagnostic session plus a disciplined home routine outperforms a term of weekly tuition, and nobody selling tuition has an incentive to say so. We would rather say it, partly because it is true and partly because the families who come back are the ones who were told the truth the first time.

Start with the cheapest useful thing, which is a diagnosis. Bring the most recent marked mock script and the exam entry statement listing each subject's board, code and tier. The free trial lesson includes a short timed question so that the first conversation is about evidence rather than impressions, and it costs nothing - no card details are taken to book it.

Then buy the smallest block that could work. One subject, one weekly slot, four weeks, with an explicit review at the end against the error log. That is a modest commitment and it produces enough evidence to decide properly. Families who start by booking three subjects at two sessions a week have bought certainty rather than information, and they generally spend more for less.

Ask us the uncomfortable questions up front. What is the rate, per how many minutes, and does it include VAT. What are the cancellation terms in hours. What happens if the first match is wrong. Which of my child's subjects are you thin on. And: is tuition actually the right purchase here, or is it a mock-reading problem we could hand back to you to act on. All five have answers and you should have them in writing before the first paid session.

Finally, the format, stated plainly. These are live one-to-one video lessons on Gulf Standard Time. IB Gram operates no centre or classroom in Dubai and does not provide home visits anywhere in the UAE; in-home tutoring is a service we run only in India. The cost consequence is straightforward: there is no travel component in the number, and the tutor is chosen for the specification rather than for living within half an hour of your community.